Focusing on focus

Sean Cavanaugh and the Hampden-Sydney Tigers have
had their good weeks and not-so-good weeks, like nearly every
college football team, but are aiming at a second consecutive 10-0
regular season.
Hampden-Sydney athletics photo

Division III is remarkably fortunate to be able to crown the
right champion each year. But trying to figure out the 32 teams
most worthy of playing for that title, or aiming to rank the
country’s 25 best, is at times a flawed effort because of one
football truism: A team is not necessarily going to give its best
effort for 10 – or 15 – consecutive weeks.

It’s a hurdle for coaches as well, as old as the game
itself. Some of the game’s greats philosophized over it.
Pacific Lutheran’s Frosty Westering talked about playing
against your best self. John Gagliardi of St. John’s
developed ‘Winning with Nos,’ dispensing with some of
the game’s wasted time and gruff practices, and concentrating
on fundamentals and camaraderie. Local legend around Alliance, Ohio
tells of Larry Kehres’ fierce respect for – and perhaps
even fear of – opponents, which filters down to Mount Union
players, who in turn rarely are even pushed by those teams, let
alone beaten.

The team that has defeated the Purple Raiders, and with two
championships in three seasons under Lance Leipold has become the
current standard-bearer, made a point during last season’s
championship run to not get ahead of itself. After losing the
previous year’s Stagg Bowl to Mount Union, UW-Whitewater
players were reminded they couldn’t avenge a loss in Salem,
Va. without first taking care of business in Wisconsin.

That’s still true.

“Nelson Edmonds, our running backs coach, was just saying
that to our players,” Leipold said this week. “If you
have aspirations of playing well in Week 15, you better play well
in Weeks 6 and 7.”

So how does a coaching staff draw the best collective effort
from a group of 18- to 22-year-olds, each with their own methods of
motivation and problem-solving, and with unique away-from-the-field
concerns?

“As you know, it’s a grind and you have to be
creative,” says Marty Favret, who is in his 11th season at
Hampden-Sydney. “You kind of break your season into sections
… I really try to keep practice varied each day. You get in
a routine and it’s boring. I try to keep it fresh and keep
them having fun.”

Leipold recalls coaching some talented teams at Division II
Nebraska-Omaha, where he worked from 1994 to 2000 and was offensive
coordinator from 2004 to ’06.

“I think we might have at times worn our kids out,”
he said. “By the time we got to the playoffs, they
didn’t want to the season to get over, but they just wanted
to get to game day. That’s the balancing act all coaches have
to deal with.”

For some coaches, the battle is different than it is for others.
While UW-Whitewater might be trying to fight complacency to be sure
no player looks too far ahead, other programs, like St. Lawrence,
are just beginning to develop consistency.

After starting the season with three consecutive losses –
to Ithaca, Norwich and Alfred, who are a combined 15-4 – the
Saints have won three of four and, in a surprise, surged to the top
of the Liberty League.

“There’s certainly been some transformation mentally
and X’s-and-O’s-wise,” says Mark Raymond, who
spent seven years as Ithaca’s defensive coordinator and
actually left coaching in 2007 before his hire in May. “It
takes time to grow into a system and have guys realize what we can
do within it.”

St. Lawrence junior running back Marcus Washington
has put up 100-yard games against two of the Liberty League's
traditional powers: Hobart and Union.
St. Lawrence athletics photo by Tara Freeman

The taste of winning, including Saturday’s 23-14 triumph
at league power Union, hasn’t hurt.

“As we’ve gotten more efficient, the confidence has
grown,” Raymond said. “It’s a matter of starting
to put things together.”

The Saints aren’t the only team who’ve had some ups
and downs. Defiance, whose 1-3 start included a 40-14 loss at
Adrian and a 42-7 defeat against Franklin, has rallied with
consecutive victories against Mount St. Joseph and Earlham.
Kalamazoo, like St. Lawrence, lost its first three (to Bluffton,
Manchester and Rose-Hulman) and since has won three of four
(Benedictine, Albion and Olivet, with a loss to Hope in
between).

For programs where losing is too frequent or programs on the
rise, motivation isn’t an issue.

“These guys are hungry for success,” Raymond said.
“They want to win as much as anybody else. But it comes down
to preparation and execution on Saturdays. Wanting to win is not
enough.”

For programs that have grown accustomed to winning, human nature
can mean some teams are taken lightly.

“They call it the Lou Holtz thing, where every team on the
schedule is the greatest team,” Favret said. “You
don’t want to insult your players’ intelligence. There
are certain teams – not many – where you say
you’re playing yourself. This week, we have to use this as an
opportunity to get better.”

“Yes, we game plan for each opponent, but a lot of what we
work on is getting better ourselves,” Leipold said.
“When we worry about that, we get good results. Sometimes
it’s about evaluating yourself and not so much about the
scoreboard.”

That was the basis of Westering’s philosophy. And like
Westering’s championship-level teams at PLU, Leipold knows
being “the team” on everyone’s schedule is almost
a built-in guard against complacency.

“You have to have that same approach each week, kind of
one of those ‘Respect All, Fear None’ type
deals,” Leipold said. “We’re going to get
everyone’s best shot,” he says, recalling a game in
2007 when eighth-place UW-Platteville (2-8) played a 21-7 game
against a Whitewater team that would go on to be national
champions. “They can really propel their program, or salvage
a disappointing season by beating a top-10 team, so you have to
guard against that.”

And consistent winner or one that’s just learning how, the
method is surely something you’ve heard before.

“We try to take it one week at a time,” says
Raymond, acknowledging it as “an old slogan.”

“If you don’t stay focused on what’s happening
now,” says Leipold, “the things you want to happen in
November and December aren’t going to happen. Those things
are clichés, but true.”

“The games are getting bigger and bigger,” says
Raymond, “but our approach has to stay the same.”

Despite those efforts, teams can be different from week to week.
Favret’s Tigers won four of their first six games by eight
points or less, then turned in a 48-10 victory over an Emory and
Henry team that started the season 4-0. Rival Randolph-Macon,
meanwhile, won its first six games by 11 points or more, then lost
42-28 to Washington and Lee on Saturday.

Schoolwork, family issues and social life affect players off the
field. “We probably get a fraction of them that we come to
notice as coaches,” Leipold says.

On the field, specific matchups, injuries and weather can add to
that to create, at times, more variables than a coach can
control.

“You get fans coming up to you before the game asking
‘are you ready?’ says Favret, who believes practices
help demonstrate a team’s mind-set. “I have no idea. I
thought we were in a load of trouble against Emory & Henry and
we come out and do that. You just never know, and that’s kind
of what makes the game interesting.”

When fun and games become serious
The risk of severe injury on the field is a hot-button topic among
football fans this week, following an NFL Sunday with more violent
collisions than any in recent memory. In some forums, the
discussion has become about the NFL’s reaction to the hits
– increased enforcement of its already-in-place rules –
and it hasn’t been a particularly thoughtful discussion. In
some cases, it's been angry and resentful – even skeptical of
the motives -- of the NFL’s efforts to prevent serious
injury.

No one will ever legislate the violence out of football.
It’s precisely the combination of speed, power and necessary
intellect that makes the game so attractive. And while the larger
discussion really should be one about promoting form tackling over
leading with the head and careless helmet-to-helmet contact, it
takes no more than a split second to remember we’re all on
the same team.

When a player is seriously injured, the stadium falls silent.
Players kneel next to their opponents with blank stares on their
faces, as some begin to talk to God. “Please let him be
okay.” “Just don’t let him be
paralyzed.”

At Luther, far from the bright lights of the NFL, Brandon Boles is
talking to God, praying openly for Chris Norton to be okay. Boles,
an offensive lineman for the Norse, is tweeting good vibes and
heavenly hopes for Norton’s recovery from the broken neck and
spinal cord injury he suffered against Central via @BrandonBoles.
(Norton is on the far right, wearing 16.)

Communicating by Twitter and CaringBridge.org is very 2010, but unfortunately,
serious injuries are nothing new, not even on our level, where the
players aren’t as physically imposing and the hits
aren’t nearly as fierce as in the NFL.

I can’t forget La Verne’s Rollie Dykstra, (L.A. Times), UW-Eau Claire’s Justin
Greenwood (2007 update), Hardin-Simmons’ Shay Ratliff
or Alfred’s Julio Fuentes (2009 update). The connection is not because I
knew any of them or ever truly told their stories. It’s that
players and former players know it could have been any of us.

It’s no stretch to say all of Division III wishes Chris
Norton the best possible outcome. There was good news in
Tuesday’s Des Moines Register, and with any luck, or
answered prayers, there will be more to come. You can support
Norton, financially or otherwise, via HelpChrisNorton.com, and call in during this
week’s Inside the HuddLLe show (Sunday, 6:30-9 ET; calls begin
at 7:30), when a sports concussion expert from UCLA joins Frank
Rossi, Eric Ren and James Baker to discuss the issue. Also,
here’s the NCAA’s primer on its rules for
safety.

For the love of the game
There’s no real good way to transition out of that issue
into something else. But the game does bring us more good times
than bad, which is something Around the Nation has long celebrated.
And because we want you to be able to walk around wearing your
Division III pride, ATN is thrilled to debut its first
originally-designed, just-for-us, T-shirt of the week. Keep an eye
on this space over the next 24 hours for the design and ordering
info.

If the response to the first shirt is supportive, ATN will make
a new one available each week, an a variety of D-III-friendly color
combinations and styles. We’ll open the door to suggestions
and send a free shirt to anyone whose idea we use. Snap a photo of
yourself wearing one under your pads or elsewhere on game day or on
campus, and ATN will run it. Send to
keith.mcmillan@D3sports.com.

Over/under
Since the beginning of October, ATN has been examining teams that
are ranked a little higher in the D3football.com top 25 than they probably should be
and those that are flying below the radar:

Overranked

No. 15 Trine: Aesthetically, I don’t have a problem with the
Thunder in the mid-teens, as I love what coach Matt Land has done
taking also-ran Tri-State and making them conference power and
attendance leader Trine. Here’s my beef: Although you
can’t fault a team for only beating who it plays, you also
can’t consider all 7-0 records equal. I see at least two
teams – St. John Fisher and Pacific Lutheran -- whose
unbeaten marks contain wins against teams that have impressed
otherwise. With Trine’s .316 opponents’ winning
percentage (18-39, including 10-21 from past opponents, ranking
dead last, 202nd among teams with at least nine D-III opponents),
all I see going for them by comparison is having started in the
poll earlier.

No. 25 Wabash: If a 5-1 record against middling competition makes
a team poll-worthy, then we should call into question the record of
all 30 one-loss teams. The seven others in the top 25 all lost to
other ranked teams, as did unranked Rowan, Baldwin-Wallace and
Illinois Wesleyan. And there are teams like Alfred, whose opponents
to date (16-13, .571) are more impressive than the Little
Giants’ (12-18, .400) and have solid wins (the Saxons beat
5-1 Springfield).

Underranked

No. 19 St. John Fisher: Only Utica has been within 20 points of
the Cardinals, in a 35-24 loss, and there’s little to suggest
some of the other 7-0 records ranked higher include wins over teams
better than Ithaca and Utica. Once again, a team that wasn’t
coming off a deep playoff run last season and started the season
off voters’ radar is taking too long to get this year’s
respect.

Unranked Rowan: I thought there should have been more bounce after
their win against Cortland State, considering they’ve also
beaten 5-1 Lycoming. But the 26-7 loss to Montclair State might be
holding the Profs back.

Pool B watch
We’ll get into regional rankings, strength of schedule and
other playoff potentials in the next ATN, but if you can’t
wait that long, there’s a pretty good running wrapup of the Pool B picture on Post
Patterns.

Pool C watch
For now, let’s say any team with two or more losses is out
of the picture, though that might not be the case when the 32 teams
are selected. Of the nation’s 21 unbeaten teams and 30
one-loss teams, four are NESCAC, and all are in competition for
automatic bids except those teams from the ACFC, ECFC and UAA
(because they don’t have one) and the LL, USAC, UMAC and
NathCon (because every team in those conferences has two losses or
more).

There are still quite a few head-to-head clashes left that could
clear things up, or further muddy pictures, like Linfield-PLU,
Wartburg-Central, Wesley-Salisbury, Wittenberg-Wabash and
Hampden-Sydney/Randolph-Macon. The SCIAC has four one-loss teams.
The NEFC Bogan has three, only one of which can face off in the
title game with playoffs on the line against the Boyd champ.

Throughout the week on Twitter. Follow @D3Keith.
It’s a sporadic stream of short-form minutiae, most of it
D-III related.

On Around the Nation’s Post Patterns thread,
at the top of the General Football board. That’s the best
place to ask a question about a topic raised in the column or
continue a discussion unrelated to this week’s ATN.

Mondays, Pat Coleman and I wrap up the week that was in our
podcast. Download from iTunes or listen to it in the
Daily Dose’s media player.

On Saturdays, the The Daily Dose features a running game day
thread, for real-time reactions from across the country. When ATN
travels, find bonus observations there or on Twitter.

The press box
Readers: Around the Nation encourages your opinions on the column,
the top 25, moments to
remember for the year-in-review, insight on rivalry and trophy
games, road trip suggestions (non-Saturday afternoon kickoffs that
can be paired with a game at a traditional time work especially
well) and whatever else crosses your mind. Readers can best get a
response by posting on Around the Nation's running thread on Post
Patterns (under general football). Send email to
keith.mcmillan@d3sports.com or use our feedback form.

Sports Information Directors: Both the e-mail address and street
address are new this season. To contact Keith McMillan, use
keith.mcmillan@d3sports.com, or mail to D3football.com, 3836
Appaloosa Dr., Woodbridge, Va., 22192.

Ryan is D3football.com's Senior Editor and begins as National Columnist in fall 2014. He was the Around the Mid-Atlantic Columnist from 2007 to 2011; has worked on all but one of the preseason Kickoff publications; has done game-day writing and photography and the pregame broadcast at the championship Stagg Bowl in Salem for almost a decade; and has taken photos at the Final Four for D3hoops.com. He's also on the selection staff for the Liberty Mutual Coach of the Year award.